Mnemonics Made Me Do It: Animal Words In Chinese Via Visual Memory Cues

Having recently spent some time reading and learning a little bit about how memory works (many thanks to Memrise.com and to your wonderful blog!), I've decided to try something different to help my readers learn some Chinese words.  Here are a few Chinese words for animals for which I've created visual mnemonics (memory aids).  Take a quick gander at the images and their descriptions, and after reading through all of them, see the list at the bottom of this post and try to recall each of the words you learned.  Don't be surprised if these words become a permanent part of your memory.  Let me know if this technique worked for you by commenting below.  As an added bonus, click on each of the Chinese animal words in blue to learn the Chinese character for that word via mnemonics on memrise.com.

Cat photo by elian (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html),  
CC-BY-SA-3.0 or CC-BY-2.5], via Wikimedia Commons;
Photo of Mao Zedong adapted from image © Raimond Spekking / Wikimedia 
Commons /CC-BY-SA-3.0 & GFDL

māo

The Chinese word for "cat" is māo which is pronounced just like the Mao in Mao Zedong (Mao rhymes with "wow").Here we see a cat that's searching the internet for "Mao" (Mao Zedong), helping us to remember that cat = māo.

 niú

Here we have a cow whose "knee" is sporting a "u".  The Chinese word for "cow" is " niú (pronounced "knee - u"). 

By Contributor (self-taken) [GFDL 
(http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html),CC-BY-SA-3.0 or  
CC-BY-SA-2.5-2.0-1.0 ], via Wikimedia Commons

gǒu

The Chinese word for "dog" is gǒu (pronounced like "go"). This picture shows us a nice place for doggies to "go" when they need to "go". 

 Photo by TSayles via Flick

mǎ

To say "horse" in Chinese, we say mǎ.  To help us remember, here's a picture of your ma riding a horse.  Well, maybe not your ma, but someone's ma, no doubt.

adapted from "Sheep in the shadow of a sheep" 
(Dave Croker) / CC BY-SA 2.0

yáng

The Chinese word for "sheep" is yáng (like yawn with a "g" at the end).  Here we see a picture of a sheep yawning plus the letter G.

Image adapted from an image by Furryscally via Flickr

shé

To say "snake", we say shé, which sounds like "shut" without the "t".  It also sounds very much like shushing someone, so our picture is of a snake shushing us.

Image by Squish_E via Flickr

yú

"yú" is the word for "fish".  These fish are somehow tattooed with the phrase, "I love you".  Perhaps we could change it to "I love yú?"

Image by iBjorn via Flickr

hǔ

hǔ is it hiding in that tiger costume? Perhaps they were trying to illustrate that the Chinese word for "tiger" is hǔ.

Image by tompagenet via Flickr

hóuzi

This little monkey is playing with a hose.  Clearly he's trying to show us that the Chinese word for "hose" is hóuzi (pronounced "ho-zuh").

Image adapted from an image by Carly & Art via Flickr

tùzi

This hungry rabbit is eating some twos to help us remember that the word for "rabbit" is tùzi (two-zuh).

MamaGeek at en.wikipedia
[GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-3.0],
from Wikimedia Commons

 zhū
In Chinese, the word for "pig" is zhū, which is pronounced like the "ju" in "juice".  In this photo you can see the little piggies drinking the mommy pig's pig juice.  That should help you remember that to say "pig" you say zhū, like the "ju" in "juice".

Image by Ambism via Flickr

lǎoshǔ

Wow.  These are some loud shoes.  Don't you agree?  Thankfully, these loud shoes are useful for something other than as clothing (thank goodness!).  The word for "rat" and "mouse" sounds just like "loud shoes!" That word is lǎoshǔ.


Alright, now see if you can recall the Chinese words for each of the animals listed below:

1.  horse

2.  dog

3.  cat

4.  rabbit

5.  snake

6.  monkey

7.  mouse

8.  pig

9.  tiger

10.  fish

11.  cow

12.  sheep

How did you do?

Dusting Off The Old Chinese Books

Today I sent my husband out to the garage to get my old Chinese textbooks.  Yes, they were in the garage collecting dust.  No I don't feel guilty about that.  It's been a while since I've had the time to sit down and read any book - let alone one that involves learning.  As of late, most of my days have been spent cleaning up toys, complaining about how there's "never anything good to eat around here", and making important decisions like choosing to ignore the fishy crackers mashed into the carpet in the back seat of our Buick Century.  Learning Chinese wasn't really on my mind for obvious reasons, but now that our youngest is sleeping better at night and now that I'm realizing that there's never really any perfect time for a busy adult to (gasp!) learn something new (are you thinking "old dog"? I am...), I've decided to just knock a few nonessentials (eating?) out of my schedule and hit the books.

Today's word of the day (first ever!) is yīnggāi (应该 ) "should" or "ought to" as in I should (yīnggāi) have gotten these books out earlier.  I should (yīnggāi) have killed that spider in the corner of the back window when I saw it a couple mornings ago (now I don't know where it went and it's giving me nightmares).  Or, I should (yīnggāi) stop eating large quantities of ice cream each day because it's likely that it won't help me maintain my figure, keep wrinkles at bay, and increase my cognitive abilities (a girl can dream...).  Also, I should (yīnggāi) explain a little about how Chinese words are pronounced - for the benefit of anyone out there who is new to Chinese.

Spoken Chinese is the stuff horror movies are made of because of its four tones.  Each syllable of a Chinese word is said using one of these four tones.  Use the wrong tone and you might just say the wrong word.  A classic example starts with the word "mǎ" (马) which means "horse".  Notice the little symbol above the a?  That little v-shaped symbol means that the syllable "ma" is pronounced with the third of the four Chinese tones.  Here's the syllable "ma" written in pinyin (Chinese written with roman letters to help one learn pronunciation) with each of the four tonal indicators in order - mā, má, mǎ, mà.  Now, as I mentioned before, if you pronounce "ma" using the third tone (mǎ), it means "horse".  If, however, you pronounce it with the first tone (mā), it means "mother".  Here's where I feel the need to interject a word of caution:  If, in trying to be polite, you gesture to someone's mother "mā" and proceed to ask how she is while incorrectly referring to her as a horse "mǎ", you might just offend someone.  Personally, if you referred to my mother as a horse, I would no longer consider you friend worthy, and you might just find your picture on my dart board (if I had one...).  I'm just saying.  Anyways, back to "ma".  If you pronounce "ma" using the fourth tone (mà) it becomes a verb, meaning "to curse, swear or scold".  Let's avoid cursing our friends' mothers, shall we?  Do you see where I'm going with this?  It's imperative to not neglect learning the important differences between the tones.

For the sake of your friends' mothers, you might just want to check out this handy link to more information on the four Chinese tones, which includes sound clips to help you learn how to say them correctly.  Also, for fun, here's a neat little game that allows you to practice tones.  Learning how to accurately use the four tones is essential.  Essential, essential, essential.  I think I'll say it one more time so you know I mean it: essential!

Now that we've gotten that out of the way, let's review the four words that we've learned today.  If you read this post without intending to learn anything, you might have just learned a few things against your will.  Unfortunately, it's to late to do anything about that.  So here are our words:

1.  yīnggāi (应该) should, ought to
Should (yīnggāi) I have learned the four tones before trying to talk about your mother? You bet.


2. mǎ (马) horse
No, your mother does NOT look like a horse (mǎ).  My mistake.


3. mā (妈) mother
Your mother (mā) is actually quite beautiful now that her plastic surgery is complete.


4.  mà (骂) to curse, swear, or scold
I'm really didn't intend to curse (mà) your mother.  How can I make it up to you?  Do you take debit?


So there you have it.  My first standard post.  Feel free to leave comments if you'd like.  Specifically, I'm open to suggestions about future words of the day (but keep it clean, of course -there are 10 year olds out there who also want to learn how not to insult their friends' mothers).  And, of course, feel free to suggest corrections to any of my posts if I should happen to make any errors.  If I were perfect, I'd be speaking fluent Mandarin by now, and, naturally, I'd be insulting all kinds of peoples' mothers.

Don't forget to check out this weeks interactive vocabulary list.

Image courtesy of Timothy Vollmer